SCHINDLER’S LIST Fear of Russian Front Topas

The Iron Furnace: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story (New Edition), by George Topas. 2014

Civil Disturbances Were Not the Holocaust! Oskar Schindler’s Heroism Dubious. Postwar Jew-Killing From Banditry, Not Some Mythical “Holocaust After the Holocaust”

This work is lucidly written. The author was an assimilated Polish Jew whose parents had been well-off shoemakers. He experienced the 1939 War, the Warsaw Ghetto, and his “life” in a succession of German work camps.

DO NOT CONFLATE MINOR CIVIL DISTURBANCES WITH THE HOLOCAUST

This is increasingly done by the like of Kopstein and Wittenberg, in their INTIMATE VIOLENCE. They relativize the killings of a few Jews, by Poles and Ukrainians, with the German-made Holocaust of 6 million Jews.

In contrast, author George Topas keeps things in common-sense perspective. He describes the spring 1940 pogrom as the deed of Polish hoodlums, whom the Germans incited. (p. 35).

DOES NOT CONFUSE POSTWAR BANDITRY WITH MURDEROUS ANTISEMITISM, MUCH LESS “POLES FINISHING HITLER’S JOB”

After the war, Topas learned that one of his relatives, in German-occupied Poland, had been murdered. Instead of automatically blaming Poles and accusing them of (what else?) anti-Semitism, one of the surviving relatives noted that the person had fallen victim to bandits of unspecified (or unknown) nationality, and that there was no lack of vile people, especially in wartime. (p. 265).

JEWS WARNED BY POLES, NOT MOCKED

On another subject, Topas received food packages from his grandmother in the USA, at least through November 1941 (p. 64), thus refuting the notion that Jews were completely isolated from the outside world. On still another subject, while Topas was on a train that he thought (erroneously) was on its way to Treblinka and death, he noticed a Polish peasant onlooker, through the window, on a stop. The peasant had a somber expression, as if watching the funeral of one of his neighbors. (p. 110). [Along with many other similar testimonies, it contradicts the Polonophobic tall tale of throngs of Poles cheering as the Jews were being sent to their deaths.] Finally, despite their obsession with Aryan racial purity, the Germans were not averse to using Jewish prisoners for compulsory blood transfusions to benefit wounded German soldiers. (p. 197).

MOST GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS WENT UNPUNISHING

After being liberated by American forces, Topas eventually testified in some lesser-known trials of German war criminals. He called attention to the fact that the vast majority of them escaped justice. (pp 1-10, 268).

WHY JEWISH RESISTANCE TO ASSIMILATION

The anti-assimilationist attitude of most Polish Jews is usually attributed to Jews not being granted equal rights with gentiles, or not being able to “fit” into a society that has a strong Christian-majoritarian atmosphere. However, a self-concept of one’s Jewishness that is incompatible with assimilation also plays an important role. Assimilation can be seen as abandoning essential aspects of Judaism. Such was the case with George Topas’ father, (quote) He was a thinking individual who eventually reached the conclusion that assimilation was a failure–a failure to appreciate our own traditional values. (unquote). (p. 12).

WHO IS THE ARBITER OF HOW JEWS ARE SUPPOSED TO BEHAVE IN THE NATIONS IN WHICH THEY FIND HAVEN?

On a possibly related issue, the author touches on the post-Pilsudski government of Poland, the O. Z. N. (OZON, the Camp of National Unity). (p. 13). Colonel Jan Kowalewsky [Kowalewski] is quoted as wanting Poland’s Jews shipped to Madagascar. [BTW, an old idea first conceived by Zionists.] Colonel Jan Kowalewski allegedly said that, as proof that he was not an anti-Semite, he was willing to exchange Polish Jews for German Jews because the latter made better citizens. A rabbi responded that “every country gets the kind of Jews it deserves.” (p. 13). Apart from overlooking Poland having accepted large numbers of Jews that had been persecuted in medieval Germany, and the fact of economically-driven Jewish Germanophilia, the rabbi’s reasoning is unclear. Is he implying that a gentile nation must meet the approval of its Jewish minority before the Jews will give it their allegiance? Is this not a form of Jewish snobbery?

INSIGHTS INTO OSKAR SCHINDLER’S MOTIVES?

The author spent some time at Plaszow, but does not mention Oskar Schindler. However, he earlier was a forced laborer at Camp Budzyn, which was a satellite camp of Maidanek (Majdanek). It contained 3,000 Jewish prisoners, and hundreds of Polish ones, and, for a time, was a Heinkel aircraft factory. (p. 160). A onetime German supervisor expressed fear of losing his job and being sent to the front. (p. 161). As the factory was relegated to an aircraft repair shop, the German supervisors invented a series of repetitive make-work “repairs” in order to make their factory seem productive. (pp. 161-162).

Now consider the fact that Oskar Schindler has been accused, by his wife Emilie Schindler, of being motivated not (or not only) by devotion to the SCHINDLERJUDEN, but by fear that, were his SCHINDLERJUDEN to be sent to their deaths and his factory closed, he would be sent to the Russian front. Topas’ experience shows how such thinking played out, and why Schindler would try to keep his Jews alive at all costs.

A PLACE FOR HUMOR

Even in tragedy, there can be laughter. There was Crazy Rubinstein (as he called himself, “ICH, MYSHUGENEH”). He was the unofficial jester of the Warsaw Ghetto. He wore clownish clothes, and would tell jokes, often based on double meanings. (p. 46).

As Germany began to lose the war, a joke went around. The Germans were retreating because the Jewish shoemakers had nailed the heels on the front soles of the shoes, causing the Wehrmacht to march backwards. (p. 139).